How to Avoid These 4 Critical Customer Service Mistakes

In honor of Customer Service Appreciation Week (Oct 2 – 6) we’re reposting three of our most popular customer service posts of the last year. For those of us who have been on your side of the phone or email, we applaud your patience, caring and dedication. Today, we look at four common service mistakes many companies make that can be avoided.

Every company needs to make customer service a priority. The satisfaction and loyalty of clients is crucial to the success of a business. Employees are human and will make errors, but it’s necessary for leaders to have the right foundations in place so the individual customer service rep can identify their error and have the ability to fix it on the spot. But it all starts with management. Customer service mistakes are regrettable, but not fatal.

Let’s take a look at common customer service mistakes organizations should avoid:

1. Ignoring customers’ feelings

Emotions can sway clients’ purchases. Happiness can result in larger transactions, while angry customers may refuse to buy anything at all. It is vital companies see the big picture and respond accordingly. For instance, if you’re in retail, the period between Halloween and New Year’s Eve is not the time to try out those staff streamlining experiments a VP suggested back in July. Your customers will grow more anxious the closer it gets to December 25 and don’t want to play games.

It is also critical to provide training for your employees on the proper way to handle all customer interactions. There are very few things you can do as an organization to increase customer loyalty better than having a well-trained professional staff on hand. Clients want to know their business is appreciated and their emotions matter. A positive experience makes the odds of a customer returning better.

2. Poor service hours

A business’s service doesn’t end when its hours of operations do. Limiting customer care times to a 9-to-5 schedule can be detrimental to client’s opinion of a company. Instead, enterprises should focus on making the experience convenient for buyers. Staggering customer service hours enables customers to call at the right time for them and receive stellar care. Even if phone lines can’t stay open, keep the chat option available after normal business hours.

3. Discounting social media

It’s easy for companies to get behind on certain responsibilities during busy seasons. Social media accounts can fall by the wayside, which causes customers to wonder what is happening behind the scenes. Businesses need to make sure their social pages stay as up to date as possible, no matter how strapped for time they are. Clients often reach out via social media to communicate their criticisms, and failing to address those comments will only anger customers more. If you have to, hire a freelance social media writer to keep your content fresh and interact with questions and comments that come in so you’re at least giving your customers the impression that you’re still there.

4. Too much upselling

When customers reach out for assistance, they want the process to be quick and easy. Forcing your reps to add too much extra information into the conversation will lead clients to become disengaged from the interaction. Businesses need to keep the upselling to a minimum and make sure the dialogue is appropriate for the situation. It’s all about finding the proper context for a selling opportunity. If it seems like businesses are trying to take advantage of a customer’s’ time and money, that customer is more unlikely to return.

Customer care is crucial to the success of a company. Employers should make sure to avoid these four common service mistakes to ensure the return of valuable clients.